00:00:30.000hi i'm an american centrist i was socially ahead of the curve until one time i was asked to0.97
00:00:38.360challenge my own pre-existing beliefs on something now i spend my days shaking my
00:00:43.020fists at people younger than me making fun of minorities and smoking a lot of weed that was
00:00:49.300kind of my my impersonation of bill maher do you guys think that was accurate yeah i you know if
00:00:54.600at the end you could give a like a pithy little smirk also lately he does a like he'll be like
00:01:03.020the left and he like snaps his mouth shut like a turtle and shoots his face at the camera i'm
00:01:09.700obsessed with his tics like i know his tics even last month i was home with my liberal identifying
00:01:16.440democrat voting extended family when one of them said to me i love bill maher he tells it like it
00:01:23.640Over the last three decades, comedian and political talk show host Bill Maher has established himself as what he calls an old school liberal.
00:01:34.160He's also established himself as the sane representative voice of the American left, someone who's bravely willing to criticize not just Republicans and conservatives, but also his own side.
00:01:47.380He's not woke. He's pragmatic. He's not emotional. He is logical.
00:01:52.520He knows how to make Democrats win, chiefly by abandoning trans people or Palestinians or whatever variable group of minorities he personally doesn't care about at any given time, if only those gender-confused, loony leftists would listen to him.0.62
00:02:08.960This is a very theatrical performance.0.51
00:02:12.900In those three decades of telling us what's best for us, he's amassed a reported net worth of $140
00:02:19.280million and climbing, with Newsweek reporting that his current salary at HBO earns him $10
00:02:26.080million a year. I'm being snarky, I know, but I think Bill Maher is in some ways more parasitic
00:02:33.760to the American political media ecosystem than even some openly far right figures like Candace
00:02:40.060Owens and Ben Shapiro, both of whom Bill has gleefully collaborated with, by the way.
00:02:45.560When you tune into those people's shows, they're not really lying to you about where they fall
00:02:51.020on the political spectrum. Whereas with Bill Maher, he clings to this identity as the last
00:02:57.500sane voice on the left, even when he's saying the exact same things about queer people or,
00:03:04.080quote, liberal indoctrination on campuses as Charlie Kirk did.
00:03:09.140College is completely out of control. Elite universities where the kids are raised to be these anarchist, America-hating anti-Semites.
00:03:19.780And so in that way, he's creating a path for entirely other groups of people who think of themselves as liberal or progressive, people like the one in my extended family, to adopt far-right bigoted beliefs without necessarily realizing they're abandoning what they think are their progressive principles.
00:03:37.700So that's kind of what I want to talk about today. And to do that, I am so excited. I have two people here. And I initially reached out to Francesca Fiorentini of the progressive comedy podcast, The Bituation Room. Francesca, welcome to the show.
00:03:56.980And I was like, I've seen, you know, you critique Bill Maher in ways that I thought were really thoughtful. And I said that you're his foremost critic. And you responded and you said, I am not his foremost critic, which is how I learned that there is currently in existence a podcast that has been running for over a year called I Hate Bill Maher, whose host, Will Weldon, is on a very last minute notice, also here.
00:04:40.920That is, what a great summation of like all my entire body of work of somebody being like, you know, there's this other guy.
00:04:47.940Nobody's ever heard of him before, but he's here now.
00:04:50.400will i just want to ask before we get started like i started going through your body of work
00:04:58.000how did you conceive of this idea of of making this very in-depth podcast for now that's been
00:05:06.540running for i think 18 months about bill maher to start everything else i've ever done has i would
00:05:14.080say by most fair measures been a failure so i was like well this can't fail any any worse than
00:05:21.640anything else i've ever done so like why not i've i've just been at home for a while i'm essentially
00:05:28.060like a house husband and like i had all this time i'm like how much money does i was like i've got
00:05:34.080the stuff lying around to do a podcast that sounds bad i'll do five episodes if i gain any sort of
00:05:40.680traction i'll just keep doing it and it's just like i i hate him is why i do it that's actually
00:05:46.000the short answer that's what i should have led with i hate him the idea of like you know say
00:05:49.960going back in time and and not doing harm to someone but maybe erasing their career from
00:05:56.040existence you know what i'm hearing is you're trying to cancel him i he should literally be
00:06:01.140canceled because his show has no value to anyone like it shouldn't be like a canceled from like
00:06:05.740oh i'm canceled an executive should be like the show's over go home no you want to annul bill
00:06:11.620maher we want to culturally annul him and i think that is very reasonable and i understand there are
00:06:18.500worse people that have existed throughout history but it's the kind of thing where there'll be just
00:06:23.140one person who gets under your skin like what you're what you're saying about like candace
00:06:27.000owens i understand candace owens is like worse but for a long time i was like but if i could erase
00:06:31.860anybody's media career, it would be Jonathan Chay. Like, I understand he's not the worst,
00:06:36.800but he's the one who bothers me personally more than anyone else. And I think he's a good
00:06:43.200comparison because he's someone else who is kind of spiraling now that he's discovered his lifelong
00:06:48.820political project and political beliefs have failed. Like they have delivered us to this
00:06:54.500moment in time and he's just coping with it a lot better than Bill Maher does.
00:06:59.160Did that answer the question? I don't really remember.
00:07:05.360I mean, Will and I are comedians and also like I don't call myself a political comedy comedian, but I do talk about politics on stage.
00:07:12.320And I think that something I've spoken with Will about extensively is the amount of like air in the like political comedy space that someone like Mars still takes up.
00:07:23.020And for people who are quite a bit younger or people coming up, it's like it is really insane that this show being as bad as it is, I mean, on every level, on literally every level, that Bill Maher being such a bad comedian is still getting $10 million a year to do this show.
00:07:43.800So I really, you know, I'm too old to be able to sincerely embracing things like, well, as someone who is like neurodivergent, like I struggle with the idea of saying like, well, maybe it is like just the way my brain works.
00:07:57.780But for whatever reason, I'm obsessed with rules and order. I want fundamentally things to make sense. And the big thing about him is it's like this doesn't make sense. It's like not right.
00:08:07.840it's not right that a guy who has been wrong over and over and over who lies doesn't know he's either1.00
00:08:14.760stupid or intentionally uh dishonest he's a creep like a nasty sick creep all of that stuff and like0.99
00:08:22.820he's still here and in my brain i can't i can't wrap my head around the fact that that can happen1.00
00:08:29.820like there must be consequences for being bad at what you my whole life i've been taught like
00:08:34.800if you do a bad job at something there will be consequences and then you look at a guy like that
00:08:40.140and it's an extension of anyone who reaches a certain level of like prominence and power where
00:08:44.740it's just like it's not okay that this continues to happen god will you act like you just moved to
00:08:50.300la um the worst people in media and i think in hollywood often are the ones that rise to the top
00:08:56.880And Bill Maher occupies a very particular nexus of both media and comedy.
00:09:05.480Well, I do think you answered the question.
00:09:10.280I think I feel like I answered a few questions, most of which were not asked.
00:09:14.400But shall we, as we do on this podcast, get into the chronology of Bill Maher's career?
00:09:20.860I have a teeny bit of early life stuff here because I know we want to get into like what Bill Maher is up to now.
00:09:26.480but we have to establish first who he was and how he established himself as someone with
00:09:31.300credibility, sort of in comedy, in progressive politics, in any of this. So Bill Maher grows up
00:09:38.460in New Jersey. Shout out New Jersey. Me too. Love that for us. He was raised Catholic,
00:09:46.100but when he was 13, his father sort of ushered them away from the religion due to his disagreement
00:09:51.900with the church's stance on abortion. And I think this is one of those early childhood things that
00:09:56.380shapes Bill Maher's belief system. Bill Maher goes to Cornell University in the 70s where he says
00:10:02.800selling pot helped him get through college and start doing comedy. And his love of pot is another
00:10:08.720thing that will help shape his belief system and, you know, supposed progressivism. Throughout the
00:10:14.86070s and 80s, Bill Maher does stand-up comedy in New York City. He takes on small roles in TV and
00:10:21.800film makes appearances on david letterman and johnny carson and eventually lands his own show
00:10:28.840politically incorrect which was a late night political talk show first on comedy central then
00:10:34.600on abc in 1993 very important about him growing up is everybody hated him uh in school he had no
00:10:44.360friends he talks about how he was bullied via being ostracized which like you know well i mean
00:10:51.700I don't know. I always hear about these figures who become just so mean. I think what I want to
00:10:59.280really identify about Bill Maher's politics early on is just that he's really mean. And a lot of the
00:11:06.100people that he's mean to, like queer people, we were also badly bullied in school. Most of us had
00:11:13.620no friends. And so at some point you have to take that upon yourself. The other thing too is his
00:11:19.980Smother is Jewish. He didn't know until his late teens. And he talks a lot about how impressed he
00:11:27.360is with his dad for marrying the Jewish woman he was actually in love with instead of the woman
00:11:33.440everybody probably wanted him to marry, which I understand. It's like that would have been
00:11:37.020pre-Vatican, too. So Catholics weren't like wild about the Jewish people. Now he talks all the
00:11:42.680time about how also the most painful thing that's ever happened to him was when his high school
00:11:48.180girlfriend broke up with him. To date? To date. To date. In 70 years, the most painful thing that
00:11:55.000ever happened to him was his high school girlfriend breaking up with him. That followed by the second
00:11:59.940most painful thing, which is a teenage autistic person on Tumblr using neopronouns. See, I've got0.78
00:12:06.540jokes too. I get the comedians on my podcast and now we're all making jokes. Keith Olbermann has
00:12:13.020a story about how in college bill maher had his own comedy magazine there was the cornell comedy
00:12:19.360magazine and then there was the one bill maher wrote and published himself because the implication
00:12:24.700is he they wouldn't let him write for the other one he's just like a guy who was always on the
00:12:30.000outside growing up but he also always thought he was he clearly always thought he was smarter than
00:12:35.360everybody else i think i sent you the clips but like he talks about how like he never liked kids
00:12:40.000He never liked kids. He never wanted to make kids laugh. He didn't like kids stuff. He wanted to make the adults laugh. He also started off trying to be an actor like politically. He did stuff, I think, for Leno. He like covered an election and that led to Politically Incorrect. But prior to that, like he was on a sitcom with Gina Davis called Sarah. He was the star of the film Pizza Man, which was written and directed by the, I think, original writer of Pretty Woman.
00:13:05.980we're gonna do the opposite of pretty woman pizza man like he comes out of the like the like makeover0.79
00:13:12.880scene looking worse it cannot be said enough like if if I had a dollar for every time one of these0.62
00:13:20.720people who ends up being just like and I mean this is where we're going right like right wing
00:13:25.480provocateurs which is certainly not what Bill Maher would call himself today but it is basically what
00:13:30.240he is. If I had a dollar for every time one of those people started out wanting to be an actor,
00:13:36.940listener, please let me know in the comments if you want that to be its own episode. I was talking
00:13:41.080with Caroline Kwan about making an episode about that specifically. It's so many people. It's just
00:13:47.040about their rejection from progressive artistic spaces and they're wanting to exact revenge on
00:13:54.420those types of people i mean ronald reagan sure shapiro yeah yeah yeah so i want to talk about a
00:14:00.400couple of the beliefs that bill maher really espouses at the beginning of his career that
00:14:05.740solidify him as just this like raw real liberal one of his hallmark beliefs is that he will
00:14:13.660criticize religion some religions bill maher has uh called religion a quote neurological disorder
00:14:21.920uh in 2008 famously he releases a documentary called religious which to this day is one of
00:14:29.420the highest grossing documentaries in the united states jesus well it's not a not a heavy hitter
00:14:38.220list people don't go to those in the theater very much but you know like i want to say like
00:14:42.440bill maher i was watching you know old bill maher preparing for this i was watching a lot of bill0.90
00:14:46.880mar every time i make this podcast i just fucking destroy my youtube recommended algorithm0.93
00:14:51.780oh no i'm sorry now bill mar you know he was like spitting some facts early on about how you know0.96
00:14:59.440like churches receive public services but don't pay taxes like stuff like that that as a very
00:15:05.840young person like made a lot of sense to me he would like poke and prod at theology in general
00:15:13.140And like the idea that like maybe God's not real.
00:15:15.880And as a kid, I grew up, you know, going to a conservative synagogue.
00:15:19.620Like those were things that like I was like, oh, that that makes sense to me.
00:15:24.560And also when he's like, I don't like religion, he means the Abrahamic religions.
00:15:28.060Like I've never heard him talk about, you know, like Buddhism or Hinduism or but ranking
00:15:34.440He dislikes Islam the most than Christianity.
00:15:36.660And he like very rarely criticizes Judaism.
00:15:40.840and that when he does it tends to be like a lot more lighthearted which is weird because like
00:15:45.760he doesn't know anything about it like there are episodes where he'll be like Shabbat what's that
00:15:51.500it's like you don't know what Shabbat is his religious stuff is hard to parse because there0.90
00:15:55.920are times where it feels like just a shield to dislike I mean not just Muslims but just brown
00:16:01.160people generally but also like especially during the Bush years he also hates Christianity like he0.99
00:16:07.400hey christianity he really does he's like it's wrecking the country his thing is muslims are0.97
00:16:12.480trying to kill us christians are wrecking america those are sort of his two stances on religion0.79
00:16:17.320during the bush years right and and one of those is true and the others is absolutely not i mean0.59
00:16:22.900what's interesting about bill maher you know being so loudly and proudly secular and anti-religion
00:16:28.720like it is at a time when the christian right is rising in this country in full on full force
00:16:33.860And I think being a product maybe of like the Reagan years as like a young Gen X, I feel like that does something to you. And it matters that you're speaking out about it because of all the power that the right is gaining. And so it is wild because it's like the right and the Christian right hasn't lost power since he first started calling it out.
00:16:53.980I think the only thing that's happened is people who keep calling it out maybe are tired of their material about the same shit because nothing tangibly changes.0.90
00:17:04.960Anyway, we can talk about that a little bit later.
00:17:07.340But just to give him a little bit of props for like, it is important to track the rise of that.
00:17:17.500But it's almost like you're not in their crosshairs, my guy.
00:17:20.640It's people that you later in life don't even see as your ally.
00:17:25.820Bill Maher also, he does something that a lot of people I've noticed who leave religion and especially leave like religious cults do, which is they conflate their belief that organized religion is bad or predatory or any number of things with a rejection of any strong belief in anything in general.
00:23:37.060Ground News is a website and an app that aggregates articles from all different publications about a single story and organizes them into left, right and center biases and gives you so many other transparency tools that make it easier to understand the information diets of not just you, but your extended family, your Facebook uncle.
00:23:59.080So I wanted to see how right-leaning news outlets were covering the New York City mayoral debate.
00:24:05.340And here's some articles that Ground News aggregated for me.
00:24:09.340Cuomo strikes at Mamdani while Sliwa goes on the attack in fiery debate over New York City's mayor race.
00:36:25.500Staying in the airplane when it hits the building.0.78
00:36:28.220Say what you want about it, not cowardly.
00:36:30.460And like as soon as he started getting heat for it, he walked it back and he's like, I didn't mean it the way it came out.
00:36:34.840I didn't mean it the way it came out.0.84
00:36:36.040And it also reminds us of the moment that we're in right now where if you don't mourn Charlie Kirk and all of his bigoted ways, then you're a terrorist or you're awful.
00:36:42.900And, you know, the censorship regime after 9-11 was insane. I remember liking Bill Maher as a young anti-war activist for sure. And something like that, like none of us were going around saying that kind of stuff. But the show is called Politically Incorrect. He wasn't wrong. It was people are getting canceled left and right for saying similar pretty lightweight things that had nothing to do with the moral judgment of what happened.
00:37:07.840And so it's funny because, yeah, he was based about it.
00:37:11.420And I'm sure he's mad or he had to swing so hard in the other direction and be like, oh, hey, guess what?
00:37:18.340We'll never get you canceled. It's being Islamophobic.0.91
00:37:21.840I think it's entirely driven around fear is mostly how it started.
00:37:25.020Like he talked all the time about how they wanted to kill us.
00:37:28.100It reminds me of like I remember when like people be like ISIS wants to destroy America.
00:37:31.680And it's like ISIS is not ISIS is on the other side of the world fighting a regional conflict.
00:37:37.160Like, why is this about you? A thing he loved to say before he somebody pulled him aside and was like Saddam Hussein is a secular dictator is he'd be like, you know, the average man in Iraq would rather Saddam still be in power than see his sister walk down the street in a miniskirt.
00:37:52.440But his concern for women under repressive regimes never extended any further than using them as a cudgel against a religious belief system he's fundamentally opposed to.
00:38:03.820But that's so liberalism. Let's just stop down because that is liberalism. Because after 9-11 and during the Afghanistan war and Iraq wars, the liberals were able to get on board with Bush's plan because they were like, oh, we're freeing the women. Right. And in a very also Islamophobic way or I mean, not fetishization, but like paternalism. Right.
00:38:28.560So that was the paternalism that the liberals, and I would put Bill Maher in there, justified, even though he was against it.
00:38:36.900But he's ultimately making the same argument that liberals who were for it and voted for it were also making.
00:38:43.120I will also say by season three of his show, he is not opposed to the Iraq war.
00:38:46.860He's at that point going. He's like, look, I think it's bad that they lied to us to get us into it.0.57
00:38:50.980But now can't we say maybe it'll be a good thing?
00:38:53.900He'll be like, can't we see there's hope?
00:38:55.340can't we be like maybe in 20 years why can't liberals look to the future and the guests on
00:39:00.740the show will be like people are dying like by by the thousands like it's it's chaos you mentioned
00:39:07.440the thing with ben affleck the most important thing about that conversation is the next week
00:39:11.420he was saying the exact same things as he was saying during the episode with ben affleck he
00:39:15.960has never internalized the thing a guest has said to him hang on will i am sure he has internalized
00:39:21.420things that right-wingers have said to him. You're 100% correct. Everything Barry Weiss
00:39:26.500has ever said to him is now a core tenet of his belief system. But Francesca, what you were saying
00:39:32.120reminds me so much of the conversations we've been having over the last two years, a lot on
00:39:36.100this podcast about pinkwashing. And this idea that any amount of death committed unto Palestine
00:39:44.320with United States dollars via Israel is justified because at the end of the day, we'll be able to0.90
00:39:50.680bring pride, gay pride to Gaza, and we can plant a rainbow flag in the rubble as if it's this like0.95
00:39:57.820humanistic murder that we're doing. And Bill Maher does a lot of that early on in 2010.0.50
00:40:05.040On his show, he had this Muslim Dior sketch where he had women walk out in like a fashion show
00:40:13.720style, but covered in traditional Muslim clothing and would say things, you know,
00:40:19.020basically just demeaning them but through the lens of like american liberalism of like basically
00:40:24.880if only you could take that off and be free also that year he had a segment where he complained to
00:40:30.960his fellow panelists about the rise in the baby name muhammad in the uk most popular name in the
00:40:39.920united in the united kingdom brit great britain this was in the news this week for babies this
00:40:45.400year was muhammad am i am i a racist to feel i'm alarmed by that because i am and it's not because
00:40:52.600of the race it's because of the religion i don't have to apologize do i for not wanting the western0.66
00:40:57.520world to be taken over by islam and he basically would just and this is something another through
00:41:02.380line of his career where he not even softly he just peddles great replacement theory he's like0.82
00:41:07.300very concerned that like muslims will take over the west sharia law he compares zayn malik of0.66
00:41:17.160one direction to the boston marathon bomber zayn malik can just go ahead and quit one direction
00:41:23.460for all i care just tell me two things zayn which one in the band were you
00:41:27.420and where were you during the boston marathon oh
00:41:32.820oh my god yeah what oh my god will you didn't know about that i found something you didn't
00:41:39.000know about there's so much there is so much there is so much there is so much like i said it's just
00:41:43.760it's so it's so mean and ben affleck points this out in 2014 i mean bill maher just treats all of
00:41:52.760the american and western atrocities in majority muslim countries as like an aberration of our
00:42:00.360ideology and of our core, you know, politics in the West where, and it's something that has to
00:42:07.160be done or else look, imagine what they could do to us. Yes. He is reacting to the fact that the
00:42:13.160country is turning on the Iraq war. Like the country is actually humanizing Muslims around0.59
00:42:18.560the world. I mean, 2009, Barack Obama goes to Cairo and gives a speech. It's a really momentous
00:42:24.080moment where people are starting to really humanize him and it's like he has to fly in the face of
00:42:30.520that either because he truly is a bigot in his heart of hearts but i also think once again he's0.99
00:42:35.820a contrarian he's a piece of shit contrarian and he cannot read the room again which is a little0.99
00:42:41.140ironic because as a comic you should read the room you should know what is hitting well as you said1.00
00:42:46.360he's a horrible comedian. He's the worst comedian. He's still throughout the the 20230.95
00:42:54.900genocide on Gaza, like he's he's doing the classic pinkwashing, like he carries it through his career0.54
00:43:00.800where he says after Chapel Roan advocated for Palestinians, Chapel Roan, who's a lesbian,0.94
00:43:05.480Bill Maher did a whole segment about he he ha ha, you'd be thrown straight off a roof if you were0.98
00:43:09.980in Gaza, which is why we must continue to bomb them. And you know, what's interesting to me,1.00
00:43:14.260though is i was watching all of these segments throughout his career but especially the ones
00:43:19.580early on like in that clip with ben affleck where he's insisting i'm not discriminating against or
00:43:25.740god forbid dehumanizing muslims but we see now i mean you could see it then but like we see the
00:43:31.860extent to which the post 9-11 dehumanization of muslims and of arab people more broadly allowed
00:43:39.600him to, just two weeks ago, so casually laugh about dead Palestinian children with Van Jones.
00:43:47.980Iran and Qatar have come up with a disinformation campaign that they are running through TikTok and0.82
00:43:53.620Instagram that is massive. If you are a young person, you open up your phone and all you see0.75
00:43:58.620is dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, diddy, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby.0.98
00:44:04.440that's basically your own thing van jones rightfully fucking raked over the coals0.92
00:44:12.380for this one it's also funny because van jones is like claiming in this clip that the reason0.90
00:44:17.520young people are pro-palestine is because of a paid social media campaign by iran and then right
00:44:22.860after he went on bill maher it was revealed that van jones himself is a mentor in a paid
00:44:29.580zionist journalism program yes of course he is yeah i mean but like this is how dehumanization
00:44:36.200works right like you're just arguing well like you know in the case of bill maher he's like well
00:44:41.240no i just want women to have their freedom and that but all of it was just about dehumanizing
00:44:47.620brown people so that when they are being genocided your brain doesn't register it as like0.85
00:44:55.920human life being destroyed yeah i mean dead baby after dead baby after dead baby the the joke is0.95
00:45:02.960then he says diddy that gets the laugh but the setup that we're supposed to ignore is dead
00:45:10.080palestinian baby over and over again as if and again van's implying that this is fake i i think
00:45:16.660it's sad to you know that he didn't know his mom was jewish or that he was jewish till later in
00:45:23.180life because i actually think zionism is such a perfect like cinderella story for a guy like
00:45:30.200bill maher it's it is all the surface liberal uh issues like you're saying like okay uh we support
00:45:38.540gay marriage we think you should you know smoke weed and listen to music and and we're not you0.99
00:45:44.100know religious zealots but we fundamentally hate arabs and muslims and that is like the core1.00
00:45:50.940tenant of a lot of what zionism has maybe always was has certainly become that cruelty it just1.00
00:45:57.500squares so much with who he is you talk about dehumanization i found him to be a fundamentally0.93
00:46:02.320anti-human person you know he'll do a joke in the monologue where he'll be like oh in a rock
00:46:08.260you know they found uh three three severed heads three guys were murdered by insurgents they had
00:46:15.580their heads cut off they found them by the side of the road don't these guys know trash pickup
00:46:19.640is on wednesdays and the crowd will be like oh and then he'll get mad at the crowd and it's like
00:46:24.360oh you're you're so lacking in any sort of empathy for human life that you can't understand that like
00:46:31.180a crowd is going to hear that and the crowd is going to go oh my god those those poor people
00:46:36.120were horrifically murdered and he's literally saying they're going oh my god it's a joke
00:46:41.100calm down and it's like yeah but like those were real people he died and the craziest example
00:46:47.080right after charlie kirk was killed so he had ben shapiro on and that was ben shapiro's was this is
00:46:52.480the fault of the left he had on tim alberta who was like everybody's too crazy bill maher was like
00:46:57.860the people who are celebrating it and on the right the people who are calling for blood i don't like
00:47:03.520any of you he's so brave they talk about this for like 20 minutes ben shapiro was like i watched
00:47:08.200this kid grow up i've known him since he was a kid i watched him grow up and to see that happen
00:47:12.440to him and like it's very like somber and emotional and angry and then Bill Maher's like okay uh now
00:47:18.860here's a segue uh this crazy thing happened and then he segues to like a wacky comedy bit and it
00:47:25.840he's doing the jokes and it's cutting to Ben Shapiro being like like laughing and I'm like0.97
00:47:30.380what the fuck is this like you were just talking about how horrified you were by the murder of0.98
00:47:35.780this guy you watched grow up and now you're like cackling at this horrific comedy bit you're1.00
00:47:41.360guffawing it's like robocop like his show has become like robocop where you watch it and you
00:47:49.100go well none of this means anything and it's the same thing he'll have some intense interview with0.98
00:47:54.200somebody and they'll come back and you'll be like uh okay our next story is somebody fucked a cow1.00
00:47:58.520in iowa oh i wonder if it stained the leather and you're like what the fuck man i'm going insane0.99
00:48:05.120from watching this because i no longer believe in like tone or meaning or like anything has value0.97
00:48:11.120i have to be honest the thing that i kind of like about bill mar i've written packets for
00:48:15.840bill mar i'm sure a lot of maybe will do you ever write a packet for both we talked about this i
00:48:19.400wrote a really good writing packet for bill mar wait what does that mean what is a packet in
00:48:23.920this context you submitted to become a right to get hired as a writer hired as a writer oh you
00:48:28.240guys applied oh yeah oh my god wait maybe this podcast is its own version of like a grievance
00:48:34.000thing about you not getting hired by bill mar we're just pissed well they don't hire female
00:48:40.120writers so i i'm not not that uh you know not that burned by it but it was interesting to tap
00:48:46.260into your inner bill maher is like trying to write in his voice is just like what if you were you
00:48:51.860know an unrepentant dipshit and you just wrote you know offending everybody and there is something0.75
00:48:57.120kind of fun about not holding anything precious right and i would liken it a little bit to i0.96
00:49:03.500think bill burr although the riad post riad comedy festival i think he's sort of jumped the shark
00:49:08.200here. But he also he doesn't really hold anything precious. He'll make fun of a lot of different
00:49:13.380people. But he definitely has a sense of power. Like he's always talked about like billionaires
00:49:18.140and whatnot. And I think Bill Maher has no sense of where the power lies. And that's why a lot of
00:49:24.180it isn't actually funny. And I think this is what centrism also does is like you pretend like you
00:49:30.760are morally superior because you're above the conversation. I also before we move on to his
00:49:37.440next big belief i think his relationship with ben shapiro is so interesting they collaborate a lot
00:49:44.460on each other's shows and i don't think it's interesting necessarily because it's bridging
00:49:49.640any sort of meaningful political divide i think that you can see very clearly when they work
00:49:55.440together that they basically just agree which is very funny as bill mar presenting it as reaching
00:50:01.400across the aisle when i'm like you guys are just holding hand you know i keep saying this is all
00:50:06.320very simple. Stop attacking Israel. Stop attacking Israel. And then we won't be having these fights
00:50:12.600about when should we have a ceasefire, which is always the day after Israel attacked.0.94
00:50:18.320Right. That's right. And the amount of care that Israel is taking by going house to house and0.91
00:50:23.200street to street in the Gaza Strip to avoid civilian casualties, only to be told they're
00:50:26.600committing a genocide is just, it is sickening. It's always been that. It has. It's always been
00:50:32.000that you know bill amara's whole thing being like religion is stupid and people who guide their1.00
00:50:38.080belief system through religion have a neurological disorder ben shapiro is like america's foremost0.99
00:50:45.760jewish theocrat like he says like he isn't he's an orthodox jew whose politics are guided by
00:50:53.120his religion i just want to give a quick shout out to blue land for sponsoring this show and
00:51:00.220for being the show's longest running sponsor through all the trials and all the tribulations
00:51:04.420you guys have never wavered i appreciate that i like my apartment to look nice if you're watching
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00:52:15.700your first order at blueland.com slash fruity. That is blueland.com slash fruity. Thank you as
00:52:23.600always to blueland and now let's get back to the show bilmar's next big belief that i gathered
00:52:32.120after watching a lot of episodes of real time with bilmar is this idea that we need to break0.99
00:52:38.720out of our echo chambers this is one that is why are you laughing because he's such a fucking liar1.00
00:52:48.460I know. I know. I know. He's lying.1.00
00:52:52.720Okay, let me address the listener. I believe in talking to all different sorts of people.
00:52:58.980Part of my job is to try to engage people who disagree with me. That's actually a big part of
00:53:04.800my job. And I try to do so meaningfully. It's hard to argue against people like Bill Maher,
00:53:11.260or even like, you know, like these big YouTube content farms like Jubilee, which I talk about
00:53:17.120all the time, whose whole thing is like, we need to get out of our echo chambers. We have to talk
00:53:22.780about that critically, though, in these contexts, because what does it mean for Bill Maher to get
00:53:27.740out of his echo chamber? And how does he go about doing that? Well, let's look. In recent years,
00:53:33.300I would say the two biggest gripes that Bill Maher has with what he calls the left is that
00:53:41.080they are too hung up a on campus activism for palestine and b trans people i mean people say0.99
00:53:49.680to me all the time you make fun of the left more than you used to uh yeah because they're dumber0.99
00:53:55.440than they used to be and the right has gotten dumber too uh you know if i had to find a reason0.90
00:54:02.780why i thought i was right about doing this it happened after october 7th i mean people
00:56:00.860similarly when it comes to the pro-palestine movement pro-palestinian student activists
00:56:07.500he has had zero palestinian guests on his podcast he has had zero pro-palestine student activists
00:56:16.000on his podcast despite having oh so much to say about them uh do you know how many palestinian
00:56:21.280guests he has had in the 20 years of doing real time now i looked ahead will um i also have the
00:56:28.340line open i would have one the answer is one the answer is one he had rula jabral in 2015
00:56:36.900he has not had any palestinians on any of his platforms since the 2023 genocide began and um
00:56:44.900i just think it's really interesting that the guy who is so frequently telling us to get out of our
00:56:50.060echo chambers it's like he imagines himself as the furthest left someone can be and then he only
00:56:57.000talks to right-wingers and that's his version of getting out of his echo chamber even though
00:57:01.360the majority of the time he's been speaking with these right-wingers is spent agreeing with them
00:57:06.480he likes to find common ground is a big thing like his his podcast is a great way to like launder
00:57:12.440your reputation because like you mentioned matt gates the matt gates episode is insane if you
00:57:16.560watch that episode you'd be like what a normal guy that's one of the weirdest guys alive matt gates
00:57:21.020he's a pedophile so obviously the other thing with bill maher uh is he loves to have men on0.83
00:57:26.900who have uh sexual misconduct allegations against them and then he loves to hand them0.97
00:57:31.160wave them away so with matt gates he was like if you were actually guilty you'd be in jail right
00:57:35.500now it's like oh yeah powerful people famously always put in jail for that kind of thing
00:57:38.840and he also doesn't know things so he has terrence howard on who is essentially who
00:57:44.400believes he's invented a new math terrence howard comes on and he's like i never hit my wife and it's
00:57:49.860like, well, Terrence Howard admitted in court that he hit one of his partners. He goes, oh,
00:57:55.440you know, one of them filed a restraining order against me and got it, even though there was no
00:57:58.740evidence that I'd ever been physical with her. She showed up to court with a black eye that she1.00
00:58:03.640said he gave her army hammer. He had on my my thing is, I swear, if Harvey Weinstein gets out
00:58:08.880of jail, he will be on Club Random two weeks later. And Bill Maher will be like, I believe
00:58:13.160something happened in the hotel room. But like, I also believe women believe in like getting justice
00:58:18.740for not getting work however they can look i'm not here to like defame and i'm i will say allegedly
00:58:24.500i know what you're going to talk about you know bill maher has skeletons in his closet0.99
00:58:30.960you know just based on his public behavior with women like you know their shit that we don't know0.99
00:58:38.360you know the me too movement missed him like that bullet miss trump like it like just he is still0.99
00:58:46.260afraid like I think there are people who are just still afraid that like oh man I will get called
00:58:52.940out for the for the times that I've been non-consensual or like something that happened
00:58:56.660and there's a bigger conversation here but I do think that that Bill Maher taps into a fear
00:59:04.540he taps into a fear that men have that I think even during the Me Too movement even men who were
00:59:10.840like good good men had which is like where does this stop where does this end did I do something
00:59:17.160bad what's gonna happen to me it you can get canceled just like that off an allegation even0.68
00:59:22.540though that actually wasn't happening and didn't happen but the same thing with like the trans
00:59:27.980ideology well where does it stop well I don't know isn't this all too sudden isn't this too much
00:59:32.780And he appeals to that, like just this reactionary part of people that want to quell social movements and their demands out of fear that maybe they will have to be held accountable for their behavior and or have a little bit of empathy and understanding of people who are not them.
00:59:54.260Yes, 100%. And bringing it back to this like echo chamber thing. I mean, so much of I think Bill Maher's politics are driven by a lack of curiosity about anything he doesn't already know. Like you said earlier, I mean, he can never, he can not only never be wrong about anything, but he can't like learn anything new.
01:00:16.640Yes. He can only regress further into conservatism and like the comfort of I'm already right about everything and anyone who thinks something new, anyone who identifies in a way that I don't understand, anyone who's transgender, it's like they just must be wrong because they're outside the scope of what makes me feel comfortable.1.00
01:00:41.800and with this echo chamber thing too i mean people people like in my extended family will0.98
01:00:46.600talk about bill maher the way that they talk about joe rogan which by the way i think bill
01:00:51.400maher is very upset that he didn't sort of become joe rogan and i think his i think his like shitty
01:00:57.260club random podcast is his failed attempt at becoming joe rogan oh he was on he's been on
01:01:02.520rogan three times and his like jealousy is like very apparent it's like seven hours of video i've
01:01:09.020watched of the two of them talking it's the worst thing I've ever been through I'm so sorry it's
01:01:14.060like getting dumped by your high school girlfriend you can't imagine the pain of it how do you come
01:01:20.820down from that well like after you watch that like two of the worst people having the worst
01:01:26.340conversation possible I already had brain worms it's whatever it's like it's like you know it's
01:01:34.420like when somebody gets stage four lung cancer and they're like what am I gonna quit smoking
01:01:37.820Like, you know, I feel like I'm just in that place now.
01:02:04.520And the other thing about it is that it's good TV. You cannot make the argument that putting people on your show to vocally make a case for abolishing prisons or for freeing Palestine or for, you know, allowing people to live in the bodies they want to live in, that that's not good TV.
01:02:23.680and you got a booker you got you've got access to the best you know folks you can fly people out
01:02:28.500you could make get someone to make a good case but you're afraid of someone making a good case
01:02:33.800it's why the fox news will occasionally have someone on that they've like prepped to be like1.00
01:02:38.940you know this is a feminist and she's you know aborting live on television and they'll get a1.00
01:02:45.340caricature they're good caricature because they know it's safe because it's much better as a1.00
01:02:50.100boogeyman in your head, then you're too afraid to expose your audience to these ideas.
01:02:55.440But friend, I mean, they also won't have these conversations because those are people whose
01:03:01.220political positions actually challenge power. Yes. And, you know, we're talking at the beginning
01:03:06.000about, well, why does Bill Maher continue to have this career when he's not funny? He doesn't have
01:03:12.420coherent politics. The politics that he insists are right and that would allow the Democratic
01:03:16.460Party to win, for example, ignoring trans people and ignoring Palestine, are the politics that
01:03:20.580Democratic Party has abided by in the last several election cycles, and it is losing
01:03:25.500catastrophically. Fuck that. They can't even defend abortion rights. I mean, you know what1.00
01:03:29.880I'm saying? He is bad at everything he claims to be a voice for, and yet he still has this career.
01:03:36.880Well, that's because he sucks up to power. Just like Barry Weiss, who was just put in as the head0.77
01:03:40.860of CBS News, these are people who fundamentally, at the end of the day, will not challenge
01:03:45.780challenge power they will not challenge the head of hbo the head of paramount and that's why they
01:03:50.700keep their careers and in the case of bill maury has a legacy audience who will tune into any slop
01:03:56.000he feeds them and that's why he's not going to have those guests on that actually challenge power
01:04:00.600and he is going to continue to pretend that having an amicable conversation with riley gains wherein
01:04:06.980he makes fun of leah thomas's genitals for an hour uh is what it means to get outside of your
01:04:15.100echo chamber it really is important to understand that it's not just bill maher there's so many
01:04:21.240centrists who do the exact same thing i mean i've been on piers morgan's show many times they don't
01:04:27.400have me on anymore because i've asked to be paid and i also destroyed their last panel but um
01:04:31.900you know piers morgan consistently compares himself openly to bill maher i'm like bill maher
01:04:38.480i believe in gay marriage but you've got answer for the trans people first and he's obsessed with
01:04:44.340trans women in sports. And I think this is very much deliberate. And so it is the disservice and
01:04:51.520to to Will's goal of obliterating the career of this man. It is true because he takes up not just
01:04:59.600comedic space, but also political space as seemingly liberal, seemingly on the left and
01:05:05.260seemingly having these discussions when in fact it's just two very well off privileged people
01:07:11.720It was essentially like a regurgitation of all of these falsehoods,
01:07:15.600misinformation, if not total disinformation about trans kids.0.94
01:07:18.500And it was essentially saying, you know, we'll throw away trans kids.
01:07:23.000Again, he keeps saying like, we'll stop doing this as if he's a representative of the left.0.86
01:07:27.340We'll throw away trans kids as long as you stop doing authoritarianism.
01:07:32.300i feel like that's called the kamala harris campaign babe like exactly also it's like0.97
01:07:39.760well why don't we just keep doing authoritarianism and then we'll just throw
01:07:42.960trans people away ourselves like exactly why do we even need to make that deal0.58
01:07:47.720we're gonna negotiate with the authoritarian stop beating me up and i'll give you five dollars0.99
01:07:53.120like i could just beat the shit out of you and then take your whole wallet like i don't need to1.00
01:07:57.260i don't need to honor your pathetic that's the thing too he's pathetic this kind of pathetic1.00
01:08:01.600bargaining. It's like, who are you to make these negotiations? And also like, why would they take1.00
01:08:08.140like, why? Why would they take that deal? They're winning, man.
01:08:12.140This reminds me actually a lot when I was watching it of the conversation that Ezra Klein just had
01:08:17.080with Ta-Nehisi Coates, which they talk about like, what are our roles as journalists, as writers,
01:08:24.320as podcasters, as political strategists, you know, like which of those lanes you choose to
01:08:29.040occupy. And it's very clear over and over again that Bill Maher thinks of himself as an entertainer
01:08:35.640on television, but also as a de facto political strategist for the Democratic Party. And he's
01:08:40.960saying, here are the minorities that we should throw under the bus in the next campaign that1.00
01:08:46.760will guarantee our win for the rest of time. I also happen to, of course, personally don't care1.00
01:08:52.400at all about those minorities. So I'm not throwing them away as a compromise. I'm throwing them away
01:08:56.680because I don't care about trans people. To be clear, that's me speaking as Bill Maher.1.00
01:09:00.060And it's interesting to me, though, because Ezra Klein makes a similar argument where he's like,
01:09:04.460we should run pro-life Democrats in red states, and we should basically throw women in red states
01:09:10.020under the bus. And that's his strategic calculation of how Democrats should win.0.55
01:09:14.740And the thing is, though, those sacrifices of minorities, even if you're saying I'm a political
01:09:22.380strategist and that's my strategy. That is what Democrats have been doing. And it has lost us
01:09:28.300every single election. It drives me crazy. It is a losing one. You're absolutely what we were
01:09:34.740saying before. Why would people want Diet Coke? They can have the real thing. Why do people want
01:09:39.140Diet Republicans? They can have the real thing. And also the most important piece in the last 20
01:09:44.020years, and I think Trump has really proved this, and I think Bernie Sanders has proven, I think
01:09:47.220AOC proves this is someone who's genuine and authentic and believes in something. So when you
01:09:52.620soft pedal your morals or you throw some of your base to the wolves, people can see that. And
01:09:59.780they're like, oh, you're a pushover. How are you going to fight for me? You say you're going to
01:10:04.860throw all of these other people under the bus. Well, I don't know. I'm a union member. How do
01:10:09.700I know you're not going to throw union members under the bus in the future? I don't because
01:10:13.640you've sold so many other people down the river. These people are deeply lost because they're
01:10:17.920stuck in a hot box of their own fucking pseudo intellectual farts. And Ezra Klein is there.1.00
01:10:24.160Stephen A. Smith is another one. And I will just add, because I worked with them for many,
01:10:28.400many years, but TYT and Cenk Uygur at the Young Turks is another one. He is someone who will
01:10:33.940consistently, and he did this when Charlie Kirk was alive, goes into spaces with right wingers
01:10:39.260and tells them that the left has lost their minds and that he agrees with them that the left has
01:10:44.900lost their minds and they're too extreme and all we need to do is come together. And he was doing
01:10:49.420an entire tour before Trump took office about a year ago after he won doing this exact same thing.
01:10:56.460I mean, he's even, Cenk Uygur has done this to me personally going on Jillian Michael's show
01:11:01.000and saying that I stood with trans athletes too much to a point on a Piers Morgan appearance0.89
01:11:07.060and that that made me look crazy and it made me look stupid the point is is that there are a lot0.98
01:11:12.920of people who do this and they purport themselves to be progressive and liberals and they get on0.98
01:11:17.440shows they get platforms precisely because to matt your point they will not take on the powerful and
01:11:24.380they will break bread with the right in this grand collusion to really like kill people i mean we're1.00
01:11:31.660know this is these are people's fucking lives like you can't play with trans kids they are being1.00
01:11:37.140they're they're dying they're being killed right like it is dangerous what is happening and there1.00
01:11:43.000are way too many centrist motherfuckers who uh want to play games like this and they're all very0.98
01:11:49.480successful it's also like like they talk about oh i'm reasonable i want to exist in reality and0.99
01:11:57.120then you go okay well the reality is is that when like prepubescent kids there's essentially no
01:12:03.120difference in athletic performance no there is no difference uh and then after puberty it's like
01:12:08.020well if like high school sports it's like well most kids play high school sports for something
01:12:12.180to do like it's this thing too this idea of like everybody's trying to what make the wnba it's like
01:12:18.400no most people just want something to do they just want to play this game with their friends
01:12:21.980it's how they find community and then once you get into high level sports it's like none of these
01:12:26.320people will have the conversation of like look at leah thomas's numbers the season before she
01:12:30.820started transitioning the season where she was still swimming with men where she had started
01:12:34.200transitioning and then the season after when she was swimming with women like you can see the
01:12:39.420effects of what transitioning did to her performance they can't ever have this conversation0.63
01:12:43.900and the other thing they're wrong about in 2022 was the year the republicans went all in on running
01:12:49.700on anti-trans and that was the year when democrats were actually like defending trans people publicly
01:12:55.040And the Republicans lost that election. They only won Congress because the New York Democratic Party could not be worse at their job. So like you could just point to previous elections and go, well, what about this? But they won't and they won't ever have anyone on who challenges them there. If that show has researchers, I mean, I'd be in a mental hospital if I was like I'd have to be in a psych ward if I was a researcher on real time because I'd be like, do am I real?
01:13:21.000am I a ghost? Am I actually giving him these notes? Or am I do I do I live in an alternative
01:13:25.920reality where I'm actually in a box right now? And I'm imagining all of this.
01:13:29.400I will say, though, I think that like, you're even giving the transports gripe too much credit,
01:13:34.800because for Bill Maher, just like for all of these self identifying authentically conservatives,
01:13:39.840it never is actually about transports, which is an issue that every single American knows,
01:13:46.100if not deep down, that it just does not affect them in daily life, doesn't affect them in any
01:13:53.720life. Not a widespread issue at all. Bill Maher also goes on to talk about, well, it's actually
01:13:59.560about being able to access gender-affirming care and to be able to transition. And just like all
01:14:04.900of those right-wingers, he will go on and on about, we're transing the three-year-olds and
01:14:09.400we've got to compromise. We can't keep transing the three-year-olds. He has never held to account
01:14:14.300about what he means when he says things like that which obviously like what does he mean when he
01:14:19.220says things like that because like the way that you think about it is like oh we're you know he
01:14:22.420he loves that you always use the most dramatic language we're chopping up three-year-old that's
01:14:26.360not happening he'll question the science of trans medicine and then he'll go it's it's a social
01:14:31.840contagion and you go well trans medicine has a basis behind it social contagions aren't real
01:14:36.940that's not a accredited theory that's like not something actual like social scientists believe
01:14:42.840been but just like you said he he he lies he just lies constantly he said recently uh with one of
01:14:49.960the pod save america guys democrats will lose every election without shift on trans issues
01:14:56.000i agree actually i i also agree i think they should shift in the other direction though
01:15:01.400where they should actually stand up for trans people which is actually a great point that i
01:15:05.760want to clarify here because i was reading bill maher's reddit which is full of uh or a subreddit
01:15:11.340which is full of bill mars fans which is a really interesting group of people that actually they are
01:15:16.580turning they're turning on him oh they are rapidly yes yeah every club random they're like tim pool
01:15:22.660another can we just get brian cranston again like they're so mad at his guests he's been booking
01:15:29.020but like i read this one comment that was upvoted a bit and it was like bill mars not anti-trans
01:15:35.660He's just, quote, he's critical of the extent to which Democrats have made this a central issue.
01:15:42.360Dear listener, I need you to know, I need you to know that no matter what you've heard from Fox News or Bill Maher or anyone else, Democrats, just like Francesca said, have sold trans people down the river.
01:15:57.640Democrats, look at Kamala Harris's campaign.
01:15:59.600The one time Kamala Harris spoke about trans people was when she was asked about will she protect gender-affirming care in an interview, and she said she would leave it up to the states.
01:16:12.120That is the extent to which Kamala Harris made trans kids and trans people broadly a part of her campaign messaging.
01:16:19.020Democrats have done the opposite of make this a central issue, which I think in the face of the
01:16:27.440amount of discrimination that trans people are facing is a bad thing. I think they should stand
01:16:32.180up for trans kids. But Bill Maher doesn't think that like Bill Maher treats Democrats throwing
01:16:39.160trans kids under the bus as a compromise. For Bill Maher, it's not a compromise because Bill
01:16:44.380mar authentically does not care about trans people exactly all of this just reminds me a lot
01:16:49.480of like when i talk to centrists who speak on behalf of progressives and say like this is what
01:16:56.060we have to do if we progressives want to win we all want the same thing we just disagree on how
01:17:01.280to get there and i'm like well bill i don't know if we want the same thing i definitely don't i
01:17:07.980don't i don't want your clinky glasses in your creepy little basement and all the you know the
01:17:13.320pedophiles that you have on your show I definitely don't want the same world that Bill Maher wants
01:17:17.380but I think that's exactly this like bad strategy is really important to understand because I think
01:17:23.900Bill Maher plays a role that a lot of centrists like to play and I would I even include you know
01:17:28.600I mentioned Cenk I think there are many others I think Ezra Klein does this too which is I'm
01:17:33.700going to interpret politics for you broader audience and broader liberals by actually
01:17:40.020representing the arguments of the right. You know, it's the right that has made trans athletes
01:17:45.860unissue. It's not the left. But when you have figures like Marr and others and other centrists
01:17:52.620like basically taking hook, line and sinker, the issues that the right has claimed the left
01:17:59.460only cares about, that is when it becomes a problem because then you're looking to someone
01:18:04.920like Ezra Klein for your sort of political bellwether. And he's telling you, you've made
01:18:09.940abortion too much of an issue, ergo walk away from it. And it's scaring the red state. And he's
01:18:15.480supposed to be your sort of like, again, your political analyst. And so then you say it's okay
01:18:20.600to walk away from these issues. And we don't have to imagine, obviously it's happening to trans
01:18:25.460people, but it's happening to immigrants right now. What happens when an entire political party
01:18:30.720walks away from the immigrant community in the United States, we're seeing it. They get rounded
01:18:37.000up by ICE. People are being disappeared. Kamala Harris could not be bothered to go visit Springfield
01:18:42.660with the Haitian immigrants who are being demonized as they're eating their cats or eating the dogs.1.00
01:18:46.760It's not funny. It was funny for like a moment. And then there's like neo-Nazis in the streets.1.00
01:18:51.840People are fearing for their lives. And it's like, yeah, man, when you sleep on immigrant rights,
01:18:56.080when you sleep on a real pathway to citizenship when you sleep on amnesty for fucking 30 years0.93
01:19:01.500this you get rolled and so like okay is it okay to sell out moms and dads who are hard-working0.96
01:19:07.120immigrant workers is that is that cool for you because that's what's happening now are we going
01:19:11.240to win now are we going to win now i mean if you ask schumer we will win now because all we need
01:19:15.920to do is let it get really really bad do nothing and people are going to vote democrat that was
01:19:21.180such a great tangent and to that end too they're like well if we just abandon trans people if we
01:19:27.300just abandon immigrants remember kamala promised to be harder on the border than trump if we just
01:19:33.840sell out uh palestinians if we just sell out whoever the hell is next we can win and i'm like0.92
01:19:41.900well also what is what are we winning yeah what's left they're like well we just have to abandon0.97
01:19:47.600in everyone to get power and i'm like well what's the point of i i don't i don't get it embrace the
01:19:52.440billionaires um you are you gonna get to the zoran part because i cannot wait yes yes zoran who zoran
01:19:59.660mamdani if you this is a real if you're living under a rock but i always like to make sure
01:20:04.040everyone listening is on the same page is the front runner for mayor right now here in new york
01:20:09.740city he defeated andrew cuomo in the primary andrew cuomo is humiliating himself by running again
01:20:15.280And now they are rematching on November 4th. Can't wait. Get out to vote if you live in New York City. But Zoran Mamdani is a self-identified democratic socialist. He is pro-Palestine. He is vocally pro-trans among all sorts of other things. And he is galvanizing people globally, beyond New York City, beyond New York, beyond the United States, globally.
01:20:40.040The amount of people in my messages saying, oh, I'm from like the Netherlands and we're getting, you know, TV segments about Zoran.
01:20:47.800And he is, you know, running as a Democrat and galvanizing people in a way that no Democrat has been able to since AOC kind of and before that Bernie.
01:20:56.860And what did Bill Maher say about Zoran?
01:20:59.820Bill Maher said that he is, quote, a walking advertisement for the Republican Party.
01:21:04.520do you think the mayor that one person if he is a democratic socialist do you think that he would
01:21:09.920have the power and influence to be able to like usher in socialism definitely has the power and
01:21:17.220influence to elect jd vance or whoever is the republican candidate next time it is a walking
01:21:23.660commercial for the republican party and it's just so funny to me that bill mar thinks that
01:21:29.940Because it's like he's an advertisement for the Republican Party to you, specifically, Bill Maher, because Zoran is an actual progressive who believes in progressive ideals that you don't believe in.
01:21:45.660And he's winning. He's winning. You're just becoming a Republican. That's it.
01:21:52.020if you've been following any democratic consultants uh apparently winning is actually
01:21:57.440bad now uh that zoran winning is bad and and we we we like to win but not like this and this is
01:22:04.880what i mean about taking up this space this sort of like intellectual space to interpret how the
01:22:10.960other side sees your movement and so like to an untrained you know viewer of bill maher or whatever
01:22:17.080they don't know anything about zoran but they say that he's a perfect advertisement for the
01:22:20.620republicans that scares liberals that's that's designed to scare you to walk away from somebody
01:22:25.680who is quite literally single-handedly been the only bright spot in the year 2025 like i don't0.91
01:22:33.300care if your kid was born this fucking year it's been grim all right it's zoran mamdani that's the0.80
01:22:39.440only the only thing that has been positive and it's like oh no we cannot vote our hopes we must0.99
01:22:46.980always vote our fears because our hopes will eventually lose that's why we've got to go with
01:22:52.620the winner hillary clinton and the winner kamala harris and all these winners because we have to
01:22:59.380we can't have anyone like bernie sanders or zoran mamdani or aoz i think it was like an episode of
01:23:06.860chapo years ago where they're talking about there's some interview with a democratic consultant
01:23:10.820who was like you know we're like nervous to put out these big policy plans because then the
01:23:15.920republicans can attack them and one of the hosts of the show just like lost it was like well hey
01:23:21.360you know what you should not even run anybody because then you really can't lose like if you
01:23:25.640just don't run a candidate then you don't have a candidate they can attack and you're guaranteed
01:23:30.720to not give them the opportunity to attack you you hear this stuff and it's like why would anyone0.83
01:23:36.000vote for this party who sits around being like i just want to vote for the biggest loser i can0.98
01:23:41.060think of. This is America. We don't like stuff like being like, we're afraid of getting attacked,1.00
01:23:47.320but don't run a harsh primary because then if you draw blood, then the Republicans have.0.97
01:23:52.900It's like if you're so pathetic that you can't win if someone runs against you,0.99
01:23:58.760why would I ever walk around my neighborhood knocking on doors being like, hey, vote for1.00
01:24:04.400this person? They're the most fragile human being you've ever met in your life.
01:24:08.080they will walk away from anything they believe in trust me i want i want to take the bill amarr
01:24:13.300model but do it in the other direction where i frame myself as the most conservative you can be
01:24:20.100oh i love that and then i get like a big time show and i'm like let's bridge the divide and
01:24:26.340then i like only talk to like communists and i'm gonna pretend that like that's the entire
01:24:31.340political spectrum and like reorient american politics first of all unironically matt i want
01:30:48.800So like those people are your natural allies in that space.
01:30:51.880So Bill Maher could have on libertarians like he would have on Boots Riley on Politically Incorrect and Boots Riley would be like a communist and Bill Maher would, you know, go at him for being a communist.
01:31:01.680But he would have communists on his show. He shortened the spectrum ideologically of people he'd have on much more on the left than the right.
01:31:09.600But he could be a bridge and have people on who would fight about everything else they talked about.0.99
01:31:14.360But then he would bring up, you know, there are too many people in prison on stupid trumped up drug charges.0.98
01:31:19.920And he would have people who previously had been screaming at each other go 100 percent.0.99
01:31:23.880I agree. And that is an example of a valuable conversation that could happen.
01:31:28.800If you just looked at the right wing people Adam Friedland had on his show, you'd be like, this is the most right wing man in the world.
01:31:33.540But he he has on weirdos, politicians like he genuinely has a broad spectrum of people on.
01:31:40.620Bill Maher really is locked in. There is the center and then the right. And because of that,
01:31:46.500he never, ever has a real conversation. Josh Rogan was on, I think from the post
01:31:51.680and Rogan, Josh Rogan just pushed back on the Trump dinner and Bill Maher like had a hissy fit
01:31:58.300over it. The Trump dinner being that we didn't even get to this, but there's so much
01:32:03.580in line with all sorts of other things. Bill Maher has been up to lately. He recently got
01:32:08.440dinner with Trump, and then made a segment of Real Time About It, where he was basically like,
01:32:13.900hey, for everything people say about Trump, he was nice to me, and he listened.
01:32:19.340Just for starters, he laughs. I'd never seen him laugh in public. I've had so many conversations
01:32:26.640with prominent people who are much less connected. People who don't look you in the eye.
01:32:32.620People who don't really listen because they just want to get to their next thing.
01:32:36.200people whose response to things you say just doesn't track like what none of that with him
01:32:43.620and he mostly steered the conversation to what do you think about this he's a great host and i'm
01:32:49.440like well why do you think he was so nice to you bill maher because bill maher is like i printed
01:32:55.040up a list of insults he said about me and had him sign them first good sign before i left for the
01:33:00.820Capitol, I had my staff collect and print out this list of almost 60 different insulting
01:33:08.080epithets that the president had said about me.1.00
01:33:11.120Things like stupid, dummy, lowlife dummy, sleazebag, sick, sad, stone-cold crazy, really1.00
01:33:19.340a dumb guy, fired like a dog, his show is dead.1.00
01:33:22.02060 i brought this to the white house because i wanted him to sign it which he did1.00
01:33:30.960and he said that like he's like can you believe trump was such a good sport he did that it's like
01:33:37.300wait if somebody came to my house and was like here's a list of all the times you owned me0.93
01:33:42.140publicly will you sign it i'd be like yeah of course because that's the most pathetic thing
01:33:48.960i could imagine being like will you sign this list of insults master like and he thinks what0.52
01:33:55.760he did was cool he can't handle criticism he can't be disagreed with his crowd if his crowd
01:34:01.700doesn't laugh at one of his jokes there are multiple clips of him this season literally
01:34:05.260sticking his tongue out like a child at his own live audience because they're not laughing
01:34:11.000they barked in off the santa monica pier by the way that's not true anymore it is very difficult
01:34:17.000to get tickets to real time because the audience is very small because he doesn't want a crowd that
01:34:22.920will disagree with he's talked about he's like my crowd is great now they never disagree with me
01:34:27.220like that's he's become a shell of himself and what he used to be fully formed was it's like0.99
01:34:34.780it's like oh that huge pile of dog shit is a shell of what it used to be so it's like starting bad0.98
01:34:41.020and just getting worse but it's the kind of change nobody ever recognizes nobody's ever like i've0.99
01:34:46.140changed but like i'm way way worse than i used to be like people only go like i've changed i'm a
01:34:52.260better person now they never go like i've changed i drink three bottles of jack instead of two
01:34:57.540every night i mean and he has changed and not for the good i mean i would say that you know
01:35:02.960if you're being generous you could say he just has not been open-minded to new information
01:35:08.760new people and new perspectives that's being very generous but i think you're right will
01:35:14.100that actually he has changed he has become more narrow-minded he has become more conservative
01:35:18.520whether that's a product of him understanding trans people exist and also want human rights
01:35:24.680and health care or just the fact that he is ultimately a conservative i think it he's a
01:35:31.520testament to the fact that the old democratic liberalism is dying that not looking at the
01:35:37.060wealth inequality like that's for the birds that not talking about palestinians look at the way0.86
01:35:42.860that Newsom and Buttigieg and and Booker have proven themselves to be total duds when it comes
01:35:49.460to answering a simple questions about Netanyahu and and and Palestinian human rights like we are
01:35:54.800done with them we are turning the page on them so he is clawing at relevance and he's got to go to
01:36:00.120the right to get his bread buttered somewhere what a thing to say that like you've not changed my0.95
01:36:05.720god if in 20 years i defend my career by saying i've not changed fucking put me out of my misery0.98
01:36:14.620kill me he's abandoned having beliefs too like he doesn't have a core he doesn't have any ideology1.00
01:36:20.000anymore it's like and he's also a coward we were talking about all the trans stuff i forgot to say0.98
01:36:23.340he will say i believe it it is inherent i believe trans people are real and there is something0.71
01:36:29.900inherent but then he'll be like the democrats have to stop saying crazy things like a man can
01:36:34.580be pregnant and it's like well if a man can't be pregnant then you fundamentally do not believe in
01:36:39.660the reality of trans people but he's i can't accept where he's at as a person so he says0.85
01:36:47.640the thing you would say if you believed a thing like the intro line to believing it and then
01:36:52.760everything else he says about it is are the words of a man who does not believe in the thing yeah
01:36:57.200i just made an episode about deborah messing and a lot of this reminds me of her where people will
01:37:03.080spew the most bigoted, vile, right-wing, reactionary conservative beliefs, but still find
01:37:11.320sort of a mixed up way to like identify as fundamentally progressive. Because in the case
01:37:16.480of Bill Maher, in the case of Debra Messing, they don't like what it says about them if they
01:37:22.060abandon the label of like liberal. And I think also, you know, these are people who live in
01:37:26.860Hollywood and it means something to be liberal socially or to pretend to be liberal or progressive
01:37:35.080or humanist. I also think when it comes to like, I have not changed, he'll say things like nobody
01:37:41.600was talking about this gender stuff five years ago. Well, I'm like, as a gay man, I think about
01:37:47.800how there was a certain point in the 2000s where you could make the exact same argument about gay
01:37:52.460marriage. And it's not that five years prior to that, gay people didn't exist, and gay people
01:37:58.400didn't want to get married. It was just that it wasn't a mainstream conversation, especially among
01:38:04.260people as privileged as Bill Maher, privileged enough not to think about those things. And so
01:38:10.180I just think it is such a ridiculous argument to say, well, I've not changed. They have. Well,0.76
01:38:16.520it's like, yeah, but it's good that these conversations have come to the forefront.
01:38:19.520And, like, it's such a hallmark of, like, a straight, white, rich guy to be like, I'm hearing this for the first time.